Two Drawings of One Face: What Dove's Real Beauty Sketches Shows, and What It Misses

The film at the top of this page is beautiful. It lasts three minutes, it's about how differently you can see yourself from the way other people see you, and it moved me.

It's also an ad, made in 2013 to sell Dove, and I think both of those things can be true. So watch it, then I'll tell you what I'd take from it: treating your body kindly on an ordinary day, whatever it looks like.

This copy is on Dove's Italian YouTube channel, so YouTube shows an Italian title, but the film is the original in English, with no subtitles.

What happens in the film

A forensic artist called Gil Zamora sits at a drawing board behind a curtain. He trained with the FBI and spent years drawing composite sketches for the police in San Jose, California (NBC Bay Area, 2013). Women he can't see describe their faces to him, and he draws what they say. Then a stranger who has met the woman describes her, and he draws her again (Dove).

What the women say about themselves is hard to hear. "My mom told me I had a big jaw," says one. The strangers talk differently: "she had nice eyes" (Daum, 2013).

Then the two drawings are hung side by side, and each woman looks at them. Zamora has said that what stayed with him was "the emotional reactions the women had" (Dove). Near the end, one woman says: "We spend a lot of time as women analyzing and trying to fix the things that aren't quite right." And then: "We should spend more time appreciating the things that we do like" (Marie Claire, 2013).

That's the best line in the film, and I'd keep it.

It's an ad, not a study

Dove calls the project a "daring new beauty experiment", and its campaign page says the drawings "proved exactly what we suspected: that you're more beautiful than you think" (Dove). They didn't prove that. They couldn't.

The writer Virginia Postrel asked how it was made, a couple of weeks after it came out. Zamora told her he drew about 20 women over two and a half days, and seven made it into the film. He knew what the film was trying to show. And the usual step in his police work, where the person describing checks the sketch, was left out. "For entertainment value, that's fine," another forensic artist, Stephen Mancusi, told her. Postrel's verdict: "This venture has nothing to do with science. It is a brilliantly crafted branding project" (Postrel, 2013).

It worked, too. Dove announced in May 2013 that, less than a month after launch, it had become the most viewed online video ad of all time, and reported more than 114 million views (Dove press release, 2013).

I still find it moving, sales pitch and all. It just can't tell you what strangers think of your face.

It's still about looks

The film ends on a white screen with the words "You are more beautiful than you think", then the Dove logo. Meghan Daum put her finger on the trouble with that in a column a few weeks later: "the problem with being told you're more beautiful than you think is that you're still being told that beauty matters a lot" (Daum, 2013).

That's the part I'd push back on. It tells you you've been marking yourself too harshly, then hands you a better mark. One woman in the film says beauty "couldn't be more critical to your happiness" (Daum, 2013). Dove's page says "feeling beautiful is the first step to living happier, more confident lives" (Dove). I'd hate that to be true.

Kate Fridkis, writing in Psychology Today the week it came out, got slightly teary at it. But, she wrote, "Something felt a little off." The women were "lovely, thin, mostly white" and "all pretty young", and the drawings treated as more beautiful "seemed to all be thinner and younger-looking". She also noticed that "all of the blame was on the women", when the pressure comes from the world around them (Fridkis, 2013).

If you're on a weight-loss medicine, that's worth noticing. Fridkis saw thinner drawings, and Dove's page calls the stranger's drawing "more accurate" (Dove). Put those together and it's the old message, said more gently.

Daum also passed on the complaint that treating big jaws and round faces as the problem is insulting to people who have them, and she asked a fair question about how the film was made: a stranger who might meet the woman again has every reason to be kind (Daum, 2013). That's a point about one ad. It doesn't mean the kind things people say to you aren't meant.

Everyone drawn in the film is a woman, and worries about appearance aren't only women's. The Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) in Western Australia says body dysmorphic disorder affects men and women equally (CCI, Building Body Acceptance, module 1).

Kind words about looks can be more complicated than they sound, too. In a 2009 survey of 220 female students, the more that comments on their appearance affected them, compliments included, the more they watched their own bodies and the less happy they were with them (Calogero et al., 2009). In an experiment with 195 young women, split into three groups, those shown body-positive Instagram posts came away in a better mood and happier with their bodies, but also more focused on how their bodies looked from the outside, compared with those shown neutral posts (Cohen et al., 2019). One survey and one short experiment can't settle anything, and neither tested what to say instead. I still think "you look lovely" and "there's more to you than how you look" are different messages.

Do we really see ourselves as worse than we are?

Sometimes. The research doesn't all point the same way.

In a series of experiments published in 2008, Nicholas Epley and Erin Whitchurch used morphing software to make photos of people's faces more or less attractive, then asked them to pick out their real face. People were more likely to pick a flattering version as their own, and found it faster. The authors' conclusion was that people "recognize their own faces as being more physically attractive than they actually are". It happened with a friend's face too, but not a stranger's (Epley and Whitchurch, 2008).

One thing before you take that personally: those are averages across people in general, and they measured something fast and automatic. The women in the film were doing something slower, going over their faces feature by feature. I suspect that's part of why the two look so different, though I couldn't find anyone who has tested it.

It isn't true of everyone, either. In a small study, 19 people with body dysmorphic disorder rated their own looks significantly lower than independent raters did (Buhlmann et al., 2008). CCI says people with a body image problem may have "a particularly negative and sometimes biased view" of parts of their appearance (CCI, Building Body Acceptance, module 1). So if your inner critic is loud, these studies aren't saying it's right.

The science can't tell you you're more beautiful than you think, and it can't tell you the opposite. Two other findings are more use to me, and they're about other people's attention.

Take the spotlight effect. In the studies that named it, people put on a T-shirt with a flattering or potentially embarrassing picture on it, then guessed how many others would be able to recall the picture. They guessed too high (Gilovich et al., 2000). You live with yourself in full detail, all day. Nobody else does.

That won't be true for everyone, every day. If you've been stared at or commented on because of your size, a disability, a scar or anything else, that attention is real, and I'm not saying it's in your head.

Then there's the liking gap. After talking to someone new, people "systematically underestimated how much their conversation partners liked them". It showed up between strangers in a lab, first-year students sharing dorms and people at a workshop, and in the dorms it lasted for months. The authors' summing up is lovely: people "are liked more than they know" (Boothby et al., 2018).

That, for me, is the honest version of the film. You're probably being inspected less, and liked more, than it feels like.

It also helps to remember what body image is. As CCI's workbook puts it, "the term body image does not refer to how you actually look" (CCI, Building Body Acceptance, module 1). It's a picture you carry in your head, and it can be out of date. If your body has changed quickly, you may know this from the other side, still seeing your old body in the mirror. We've written about that in phantom fat and body image after weight loss.

Being kinder to your body, whatever it looks like

Here's what I'd take from all this. You don't have to win the argument about how you look. You can leave it, and look after yourself anyway.

You don't have to love your body either. CCI says the modules in its appearance workbook "are not designed to make you 'love' your body". They're about accepting your appearance as it is, so it gets in the way of your day less (CCI, Caring Less About Your Looks, module 1). Our piece on Health at Every Size takes that further: care and respect shouldn't depend on your size, or on losing weight.

For me, that's what loving yourself looks like on an ordinary day. It's looking after yourself the way you'd look after someone you care about, whatever you think of your reflection.

Writing about what your body does has some evidence behind it. Researchers call what your body does its functionality: "everything that the body is able to do" (Alleva and Tylka, 2021). In a trial with 81 young women unhappy with their bodies, structured writing exercises about it raised body appreciation and satisfaction with their appearance, by small to medium amounts, compared with a control programme (Alleva et al., 2015, trial). An early test of the same programme in 293 UK adults raised appreciation of what the body can do in every body size group, "particularly among those who live in larger bodies" (Longhurst et al., 2026).

So does self-compassion, which means giving yourself the same care you'd naturally show a friend (Neff). Across 59 studies, people with more of it had fewer body image worries, and self-compassion programmes did better than control groups (Turk and Waller, 2020). In one small study, 96 female university students did a single writing task after reading an upsetting body image scenario. Those who wrote with self-compassion appreciated their bodies more afterwards than those who wrote to build self-esteem or did a control task, and more than the control group two weeks later. Both kinds of writing beat the control task on body satisfaction, and the groups didn't differ on how anxious they felt about their appearance (Seekis et al., 2017).

Keep your hopes modest. Across 62 tests with 3,846 people, body image programmes brought "only small improvements" (Alleva et al., 2015, review). Most of these studies are in young women, and none of the ones here was in people taking a GLP-1 medicine. If your body hurts, or doesn't do what it used to, writing about what it does can sting, so go gently.

Try this: one line for each part of you

It's a small one. You need a pen and about ten minutes. You don't need a mirror, and please don't go and check anything. Write what you already know.

1. Down the left of a page, list parts of your body, from your hair to your feet. Leave out any part that feels like too much today.
2. Next to each one, write one thing it did for you this week, or something it lets you do or feel. Use no numbers, sizes or measurements, and leave out how it looks.
3. Read it back once and put it away. There's no score, no right answer and nothing to finish.

Here's what a few lines might look like. They're made up, so yours will be different.

This short version hasn't been tested on its own. It borrows from the trial above, which tested a fuller writing programme (Alleva et al., 2015, trial).

If any of it leaves you feeling worse, or brings urges to restrict, make yourself sick or exercise to make up for eating, stop and talk to someone. The helpline at the top of the page is a good place to start. If you're underweight or very unwell, medical support comes first. If you're in treatment for an eating disorder, show it to your team before you try it.

Free workbooks if you want more

CCI, part of Western Australia's public health service (CCI), publishes free self-help workbooks that go much further than this page. Which one fits depends on you.

• Building Body Acceptance is CCI's workbook on body dysmorphic disorder, for when worry about a part of your appearance has taken over. Its seven modules cover what keeps that going, and how to cut back on preoccupation, checking, reassurance seeking and avoidance.
• Caring Less About Your Looks is the closer fit if your appearance in general takes up more room than you'd like.
• Break Free From ED is CCI's eating disorder workbook. CCI says that if your worries are mainly about your weight or shape and you've changed how you eat because of them, this is the kind of workbook to use instead (CCI, Building Body Acceptance, module 1). If you're in treatment, take it to your team.

CCI's materials are copyright the State of Western Australia. We've linked to them rather than reproducing them, and nothing here is endorsed by CCI (CCI copyright notice).

If your body is changing on a medicine

When your body changes, other people may start commenting on it. You don't owe anyone a conversation about your body or your medicine. "Thanks, I'm feeling well," with a change of subject, is enough.

And if you've ever had an eating disorder, tell your prescriber. An international expert panel's recommendations, published in October 2026, include screening for current and past eating disorders before anyone starts one of these medicines, and routine monitoring afterwards. They also say these medicines "should generally be avoided in individuals with active EDs", meaning eating disorders, and that clinicians should "proceed cautiously" with people who've had one (Keshen et al., 2026).

What's solid and what isn't

When to get more help

You don't need a diagnosis for this to be worth talking about. It's time to get help, rather than manage on your own, if:

• your appearance is on your mind for more than an hour on a typical day (NICE CG31)
• checking, comparing or hiding is eating your time, or you're avoiding things because of how you look
• worries about weight or shape are changing how you eat, or you're restricting, making yourself sick, using laxatives or exercising to make up for eating
• you have any thoughts of harming yourself. If you're in danger right now, call your local emergency number.

I've had CBT for an eating disorder, and it's been life changing. Our guide to CBT for eating disorders explains how that therapy works. A helpline isn't an emergency service: if you're in danger right now, call your local emergency number.

Questions people ask

This is information, not medical advice or therapy, and it can't diagnose or treat body dysmorphic disorder, an eating disorder or any other condition. Decisions about your medicine belong with your prescriber. If you're in treatment, your care team's plan comes first.

Dove is a Unilever brand. Healthcount has no connection with Dove or Unilever, and nobody paid for this post.